His influence was not confined to Florence, or even to Tuscany, but the
whole of Italy was indebted to him for a new impulse in art, and he is
said to have followed Pope Clement V. to Avignon and executed many
pictures there. Giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also
famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful Campanile adjoining
the Duomo in Florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and
the building erected under his instructions. On sculpture too he
exercised a considerable influence, as may be seen in the panels and
statues which adorn the lower part of the tower, suggested if not
actually designed by Giotto, and carved by Andrea Pisano.
Chief of the earlier works of Giotto are his frescoes in the under
church at Assisi, and in these may be seen the remarkable fertility of
invention with which he endowed his successors. Instead of the
conventional Madonna and Child, and groups of saints and angels, we have
here whole legends represented in a series of pictures of almost
dramatic character. In the four triangular compartments of the groined
vaulting are the three vows of the Franciscan Order, namely, Poverty,
Chastity, and Obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the
saint. In the first, the Vow of Poverty, it is significant to find that
he has taken his subject from Dante. Poverty appears as a woman whom
Christ gives in marriage to S. Francis: she stands among thorns; in the
foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of
angels as witnesses of the holy union. On the left is a youth, attended
by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich
and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully
away. The other designs appear to be Giotto's own invention. Chastity,
as a young woman, sits in a fortress surrounded by walls, and angels pay
her devotion. On one side are laymen and churchmen led forward by S.
Francis, and on the other Penance, habited as a hermit, driving away
earthly love and impurity. S. Francis in glory is more conventional, as
might be expected from the nature of the subject.
In the ancient Basilica of S. Peter in Rome Giotto made the celebrated
mosaic of the _Navicella_, which is now in the vestibule of S. Peter's.
It represents a ship, in which are the disciples, on a stormy sea.
According to the early Christian symbolisation the ship denoted the
Church. In the foreground on the right the Saviour, walking on the
waves, rescues Peter. Opposite sits a fisherman in tranquil expectation,
typifying the confident hope of the simple believer. This mosaic has
frequently been moved, and has undergone so much restoration that only
the composition can be attributed to Giotto.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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